An ode to Manjula's Kitchen

- Have you seen this website?
- I'm not sure about the handwo recipe, I use more ginger in mine

The other day, at a family party, my cousins and I had a bit of a bonding moment over Manjula's Kitchen.  One of my cousins exclaimed "What?  You've heard of it?  Is it famous?"  As I said to him at the time, no, it isn't, it's only famous amongst young East African Gujaratis living in this country who were, at some point, vaguely shown how to make their favourite Gujarati dishes by their mothers/aunts/grandmothers/random visiting "aunties" but have no idea how to actually make them.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when you google for your favourite Gujarati recipe from childhood, the first hit is Manjula's Kitchen.  Which is brilliant because it actually gives you the recipe that you want.  There are some great Indian cooking websites and blogs out there but, almost without exception, they tend to provide you with something that is slightly different to what you were looking for (if you are a UK dwelling East African Gujarati).

Now, I think South Indian food is fantastic, and Mumbai street food is some of my favourite food (like all Gujaratis, I think Punjabi food is too oily, though, sorry to any Punjabi readers), but sometimes I just want the recipe for the dish that I grew up eating.  Almost invariably it's something that my nanima or my mother showed me how to make "oh, it's so easy you just have to remember the lemon juice" and then I start to think about making it and realise that I know all about the critical importance of the lemon juice but have no idea what sort of flour to use.

I do post the odd Gujarati food recipe from time to time, and I hope my readers enjoy them but - really - Manjula is the real deal and you should head over there and check out her site.

Kosheri and spicy tomato sauce - Ottolenghi recipe

One of my favourite Gujarati dishes is "kitchari" - split mung beans (other split lentils work too) and pudding rice cooked up together with a dollop of ghee (or butter) and a bit of salt.  My nanima (maternal grandmother) particularly likes it with tomato curry (garlicky, lemony, slightly sweet, lovely - next time I make it, I will attempt to write it up as a recipe, but it's something I very much do by eye) and sev (crispy gram flour vermicelli noodles).

Mmm, tomatoes

When my lovely husband gave me Ottlenghi:  the cookbook, one of the recipes that caught my eye was the one for kosheri and spicy tomato sauce as it sounded pretty similar.  So, the other day, that's what I cooked.  The full recipe can be found in various places online, e.g. here but I don't want to plagiarise it by writing it all out.

Vermicelli noodles looking funny

It was a strange experience, eating it, because it is indeed very similar to kichari and tomato curry, but subtly different.  The Ottlenghil tomato sauce was much tangier due, I think, to the cider vinegar - to be honest, I think I slightly prefer the sweeter, more lemony, Gujarati version of this but it was nice as a change.  The kosheri was a much more interesting texture than kitchari, I particularly liked the addition of fried onions, but, really, I think the two dishes mostly just serve different roles:  kitchari is a bland, comfort-type food, I sometimes eat left over kitchari for breakfast because it is a bit like porridge; kosheri is more interesting, you could eat it on its own for lunch.

Mmmm, tomatoes..

Even the worm in the rock dreams of fresh herbs!

Overall verdict:  how far wrong can you go with tomatoes, lentils, butter-fried vermicelli noodles, and fresh herbs?

Kosheri

On the recipe itself..  I love Ottolenghi and, as usual, the recipe was incredibly precise - I always want to ask him, "does it really matter if I fry this for 7 minutes instead of 6?  REALLY?" and, as usual, if you follow it, you will end up with delicious food (which isn't always the case with cookbooks).

But, this time, I thought the ordering of the recipe was peculiar.  It suggests you make things in a sequence that would make the whole process take well over an hour when, if you read the recipe through completely, you can reorder it to make it much faster.  In particular, I think it's bizarre that you get to the end of cooking the tomato sauce, then the kosheri and - only then - does he tell you to fry a couple of onions for 20 minutes.  I didn't actually mind that much because I did read the whole recipe through and reorder it but, if I were hungry and got to the onion instruction, I'd have been Quite Annoyed.

carrot and gram flour pancakes, hummous and salad

Batter

One of the rather too many cookbooks I've acquired recently is The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Elia.  On the very first page is a recipe for carrot and gram flour pancakes that I've been meaning to try out for ages.

So, today, I did.  It was really good!

It reminded me a lot of a Gujarati dish called "poodla" that my nanima (maternal grandmother) taught me to make.  It's interesting to me that a) a lot of dishes exist the world over in different formats and b) that they can taste so different in different contexts.

Pancakes

Spiced gram flour pancakes (with fresh coriander and chilli in the batter) seem instinctively to me an Indian flavour and I can imagine my namima knocking these out, "measuring" everything by eye, and serving them with natural yoghurt or tamarind chutney or green chutney (coriander, chillis and green apple.)  I'm quite tempted to do that next time. 

Pancakes with hummous

But, this time, I followed Maria Elia's idea and went for topping them with hummous and salad.

She suggests carrot hummous (basically normal hummous with roasted carrots blended in) but I decided that I didn't really fancy carrot and chickpea pancakes topped with blended carrot and chickpea as that seemed rather too much carrot and chickpea for me.  So, I just made my normal hummous (the classic way) which I think worked pretty well.

Pancakes and hummous and salad

I also didn't quite follow her suggestion on the salad because I had a few things to use up - I went for pea shoots, baby plum tomatoes, spring onions and feta with some black pepper and olive oil on top.  Yum.

Next time, I might try a blend of flour (nanima recommends 1/4 chapati flour 3/4 gram flour for poodla which might work nicely), adding in some spring onions, maybe courgette rather than carrots...?